Album of the Week – 09/01/26

We welcome everyone back to your favourite slot of the week. Yes, a new year brings new excitement! While there are not that many albums released this week, there are a few good ones, and that’s enough for us.

There are a couple of other albums worthy of your attention, with Jenny On Holiday (Jenny Hollingworth of Let’s Eat Grandma) with her release Quicksand Heart, and the return of The Cribs (Selling A Vibe).

For our album of the week, we’ve gone with the maudlin Florence Shaw and her crew, Dry Cleaning. They return with their third album, Secret Love! They’re playing Vicar Street on the 17th of April, if you want to hear it live.

Album of the Week – Dry Cleaning – Secret Love

Produced by Cate Le Bon, Secret Love started life in Peckham rehearsal spaces, all members – frontperson Florence Shaw, guitarist Tom Dowse, drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard – writing, playing and responding to each other in the room: in Dry Cleaning, music and lyrics form an inseparable, generative whole. The follow-up to Stumpwork evolved through affirming sessions at Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio the Loft and explosive ones with Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios in Dublin, taking advantage of the sonic particulars of each space, and finally with Cate Le Bon at Black Box in the Loire Valley.

Secret Love is the finest expression yet of the profound friendships that created Dry Cleaning. Here, the south London four-piece take their place in rock’s avant garde, catalysing the Reaganite paranoia of early 80s US punk and hardcore with the dry strut of Keith Richards, stoner rock, dystopian degradation, playful no wave and pastoral fingerpicking, while Florence’s delivery, meticulously calibrated to her bandmates’ soundscapes, asserts her in a lineage of spoken-word artists stretching from Laurie Anderson to Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins.

Albums of Note: 

— Jenny On Holiday (Jenny Hollingworth of Let’s Eat Grandma) – Quicksand Heart

— The Cribs – Selling A Vibe

January 9th:

— Alter Bridge – Alter Bridge

— Aliyah’s Interlude – KUNTOLOGY 101 EP

— Blue – Reflections

— The Cribs – Selling A Vibe

— Dry Cleaning – Secret Love

— Home Star – A Binding Life

— Jenny On Holiday (Jenny Hollingworth of Let’s Eat Grandma) – Quicksand Heart

— The Kid LAROI – BEFORE I FORGET

— Maya Delilah – The Long Way Round (Deluxe Edition)

— Mon Rovîa –Bloodline

— The Protomen – Act III: This City Made Us

— Various Artists – We Are Friends vol 12

— Zach Bryan – With Heaven on Top

— Zu – Ferrum Sidereum